A place where beginners can participate, ask questions, and post their views. However, beginners typically ask a lot of questions about sources, tricks, books, and so on. In fact, all magicians are interested (or should be) in the provenance of tricks, ideas, and related matters. This department will service these needs.

It should be noted that Charles Bertram withheld certain touches to his Four Ace trick that helped put it across. These were described in Expert Card Technique by Hugard and Braue several decades later.

David Alexander wrote:It should be noted that Charles Bertram withheld certain touches to his Four Ace trick that helped put it across. These were described in Expert Card Technique by Hugard and Braue several decades later.

David, thank you. I had twice the fun here: first finding the damned thing, second working my way through it. As much as I've loved this book for years, it just goes to prove there's plenty more where that came from.

I recently got the third edition from 1922, and according to that the first and second editions were published in 1903 and 1911. The 1922 edition is fairly small with simple blue covers, but I remember seeing another copy once which I think had green covers and was a bit more luxurious - maybe that was the first edition. It was a long time ago though, so I may be mistaken.